


Replay Unlocked

by apprenticebard



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Season/Series 04, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 23:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10977354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apprenticebard/pseuds/apprenticebard
Summary: In a bid to stop the First from ending the world, Dawn travels back in time. When she overshoots her own creation by several months, Spike contributes to the delinquency of a minor, and Dawn contributes to the redemption of a monster. (Note: unfinished, and very likely to remain so.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going through a bunch of unfinished fic I wrote a few years ago and posting the stuff that seems like it could theoretically interest some people. I probably won't finish any of them, though if someone really likes one, persuading me to continue might not be completely impossible. Anyway, hopefully somebody will at least enjoy the concept.

The house was in that weird zone of hush where nobody wanted to speak out loud and everyone wanted to whisper. Girls had died in the fight against Caleb. Xander had lost an eye. The whole thing was just so visceral and scary and _irreversible_ that the only mature way to handle it was to accept what had happened and carry on. Buffy didn't seem to have any answers. She was adamant that they had to take out Caleb, but she didn't so much as frown at the losses. She just said something along the lines of "we'll deal with it".

Dawn knew it was stupid and immature, but she didn't want to deal with it.

She'd begun researching the time travel spell months ago, back when the First had appeared to her in the guise of her mother. On the off chance that her mother really was warning her that Buffy couldn't be trusted (which was stupid, but it was good to be prepared, right?), she'd decided to start making a plan B. In her more honest moments, she accepted that she had another motivation as well. She just felt so  _ useless _ . Buffy was the slayer, Faith was the  _ other  _ slayer, Spike was the super-special souled vampire, Willow was a witch, Giles was a watcher, Anya had a thousand years of useful knowledge stored up, and Xander's carpentry skills had stopped being a joke when he'd rebuilt most of the house to fix the demon damage. Even the teenage girls living with them were basically potential superheroes. The only person  _ less  _ useful than Dawn was Andrew, and even Andrew had projects to work on. They mostly involved his documentary stuff, but whatever. He was recording history, and Dawn could respect that.

Andrew's state of relative uselessness meant that he was generally available for conversations about random subjects- like, say, time travel. Anyone else would have been really suspicious by the end of a conversation like that, but Andrew had easily accepted her hypothetical situation. 

_ "Well, if you were going back with the intent to alter history, the main thing would be to know about cause-effect chains. You'd have to know which events caused other events. Flow charts would be good. Color-coded flow charts, including branching possibilities." _

The whole thing was, in a way, her fault. Oh, she didn't necessarily  _ blame  _ herself for it, but the cause-effect chain was obvious. See, the reason they were in this mess now was because of the First. And according to Anya, the First was able to do this stuff because the slayer line was unstable. The line was unstable because Buffy was resurrected. Buffy was resurrected because she died jumping off the tower. And she died jumping off the tower because Dawn  _ didn't  _ jump.

Spike had blamed himself for the whole thing that summer, but he was just being stupid. In trying to make sense of Buffy's death, he'd convinced himself that if he'd done something differently, Doc wouldn't have gotten to Dawn, and the portal would never have opened. Dawn hadn't argued with him about it, but he was wrong. He couldn't have saved Buffy. Dawn could have, but she had chosen not to. She was sure that if Spike had been in her position, he would have jumped off the tower, soul or no soul. And then they wouldn't be in this mess.

If she could just go back to that night, back to the tower, she wouldn't have to let Buffy talk her out of it. She could rush past her sister and die for humanity. They'd mourn her, but it would be OK in the end, and Buffy's friends would probably support her and keep most of the bad parts of the past year from happening. Dawn had had the power to stop an all of that suffering, and nobody else could say that. Not Spike, not Willow, not Buffy. So it was convenient that the time travel spell would only work for Dawn.

She'd found it through a half-forgotten footnote in one of Giles's books about dimensions. It was an ancient Sumerian spell, and the reason why she'd been working on her Sumerian so much lately. (Lucky for Buffy, when they'd needed it for the emergency slayer kit. Ancient Sumerians knew a lot of spells to mess with dimensions and portals.) She had to dig through most of Giles's personal library, but eventually she'd found the source. The spell's description was in Latin (a pain, but she was totally sure of her translation), while the spell itself was a Sumerian incantation. Nobody had seriously bothered to even  _ try  _ using it for more than a millennium, because the material component was the blood of a demon species that had migrated entirely out of this dimension sometime before the fall of the Roman Empire. They were known for their ability to move through time and space- even into other universes entirely- by unraveling and re-spinning dimensional walls so as to slip through them without disturbing the order of the multiverse. Any substitute material component would need to have that same quality, the ability to open dimensional rifts and re-seal them under certain circumstances. Kinda like the Key.

Until now, the spell had remained a leisure project, albeit a very involved one. The spell was not particularly exact, especially with the substitution, so at first her plan was to deliberately overshoot by a few months and kill herself before Glory even got wind of her. It seemed really morbid, but she reasoned that it wasn't suicide if the purpose was to save the world. Of course, then she'd wondered whether she could get the same result by killing Ben. Then she'd gotten to thinking about all of the other things she could change, and she'd ended up making more branching flow charts than even Andrew could have anticipated. She had a timeline nailed to the wall of her room, with notes dating back from Buffy's calling in LA all the way to the present day, with a special focus on the year or two before Glory tried to rip the dimensions apart. 

She didn't know a whole lot about slayer business back then. After all, Buffy hadn't stopped trying to shelter her from the evils of Sunnydale until this past summer. Dawn made up for this lack of knowledge by reading Giles's watcher diaries- she wasn't a thief anymore, but that didn't mean she wanted to lose her sneaky skills. They were extremely thorough, although of course they reflected all of his biases and were based on the knowledge he had to work with at the time of writing. There was a lot of insulting Spike, for instance, and a really impressive amount of speculation on Buffy's mental state. Dawn thought most of his speculation was flat-out wrong, but Giles wasn't one to neglect factual information, so in the end she had to be grateful to him.

She hadn't told Andrew about it, much less Buffy or any of the scoobies. If they had any idea her plan B was to go back in time and most likely kill herself, they would freak. At the same time, Dawn didn't really feel guilty for hiding it. Despite all the work she was putting into plans, she had never really thought that she would use the spell. Not before the potentials died and Xander lost his eye, anyway. She'd overheard Buffy talking about going back to the vineyard, and if that was the new plan A, Dawn figured it was past time to bust out plan B. And that was why Dawn, in keeping with the general hushed atmosphere of the house, rapped softly on the basement door before easing it open and calling down. 

"Hey, Spike? You awake?"

"Yeah."

"Can I come down?"

"Sure."

She snapped the basement light on and descended as quietly as she could. It wasn't like she was hiding anything, really- after all, she was just getting her own stuff. It was just that making any more noise than necessary would have been wrong.

"Couldn't sleep?" Spike's tone was conversational- not a whisper, but also not very loud. He didn't have any intention of breaking the hush, either.

"I'm OK," lied Dawn. "Just working on something. It's good to keep your mind off this stuff sometimes."

Spike nodded, understanding. He returned to sitting on his cot in what appeared to be quiet contemplation. As far as Dawn was concerned, Spike being contemplative pretty much proved that they were all doomed. It strengthened her conviction that she was doing the right thing. She unearthed a cardboard box labeled "small magic-y stuff" and began quietly rummaging around, eventually pulling out her prize. It was a dagger, about six inches long with a blade covered in ancient runes.

"Now what are you planning on doing with that?"

Dawn considered herself to be good at lying, but Spike was  _ really  _ hard to fake out. Besides his natural people-reading skills, he could hear a person's every heartbeat and breath. It gave him a majorly unfair advantage at things like this, and made him unnaturally good at certain card games. "Just wanted to keep it close. You know, with all the stuff going on."

He raised his scarred eyebrow. "You're in a house with two slayers and a vampire, and you think one rusty knife's gonna be the thing to keep you safe?"

"It's not rusty," she protested. "It doesn't get rusty. It's enchanted."

"Magic knife, eh? Lemme see." She handed it to him, and he unsheathed it. "Don't recognize the script. Looks old."

"Norse, I think. It's the spell inscription. 'May this knife be ever sharp', or something like that," shrugged Dawn. "I'm just going off the translation from the box, though. I don't even know any regular scandinavian languages, let alone this archaic stuff."

"Where'd you get it?"

"Anya. Last year."

"What, shoplifted from the Magic Box and never returned?" He looked at her disapprovingly. It took her a second to realize that he actually  _ did  _ disapprove now. Weird. Especially given that they'd become friends after he'd helped her break into the place.

"I gave all that stuff back. Anya missed my birthday, and when she found out she decided to give me the knife," huffed Dawn.  _ Seriously, Spike, like you're allowed to take the moral high ground on literally any subject. _

"I don't believe it. Not like her to give away merchandise."

"There might also have been negotiations involving secret child labor. I wanted the knife."

"Yeah? Any particular reason?"

Dawn crossed her arms defensively. "It's pretty."

Unexpectedly, Spike didn't laugh. "I'll give you that. Fine little thing. Almost dainty."

"It's a knife. Knives can't be dainty," said Dawn, rolling her eyes.

"Can so," insisted Spike. "Jus' because a thing can kill doesn't mean it can't be small an' pretty while it does it. Sharp little knife for a sharp little girl. Not so little anymore, but the point stands."

Dawn was skeptical- about the particular adjective, if not the principle behind it- but she accepted both the compliment and the knife as he handed it back. "Thanks."

"Probably best you have something with you, anyway."

"What happened to 'you're in a house with two slayers and a vampire'?"

"You are," he said seriously, "And I sincerely hope you never have to use that thing. But it's best to have a weapon on hand, and I'm not going to discourage you from carryin' it. Jus' want you to know there are a lot of people here who would die before they let anything get its claws on you."

Dawn knew all too well. She clipped the sheath to her belt and gave him a nod before going back upstairs. If he noticed any fluctuations in her heart rate or respiration, they didn't arouse his suspicions. He probably figured she had reason to be on edge, even around him. Maybe he thought it was  _ because  _ she was around him. Sad that their relationship had deteriorated that much over the past year, but hey, trying to rape a girl's sister will have consequences like that.

Not that she held it against him too much. Dawn still wasn't a huge believer in the importance of souls, but she understood the gesture, and it had done a lot to convince Buffy that Spike was serious about trying to be good now. Buffy trusted Spike, and Dawn trusted Buffy. Ergo, Dawn trusted Spike. Granted, she might have spent more time questioning the wisdom of that call if not for the spell, but the spell was gonna happen. Whatever had gone on between them last year, Dawn was about to erase it. She wasn't overly happy about it, given that it meant she was also going to erase just about every good thing Spike had ever done, but it wasn't enough to make her hesitate. If the price of saving the world was the life of a sharp little girl and the redemption of a former monster, then that was that. Fair enough trade.

Dawn made her way back to the spellbook on the kitchen island, took a moment to re-read the incantation, and began chanting the short phrase over and over. She pressed the knife into her arm before she could change her mind. 

Every drop of spilled demon blood was good for about a month of backwards time travel. The tower was a little under two years ago, so she figured twenty-four drops should be plenty. Unfortunately, the blood didn't actually come out in distinct drops. It ran down the knife in a little red river, and then the river wasn't so little. She was reminded of the time she cut herself to see if she would even bleed red. This wasn't  _ that  _ bad, but she was starting to think that she should have cut her finger instead of her arm. 

She heard hurried, thudding footsteps on the stairs. The basement door slammed into the wall as it flew open. There was a flurry of whispers from the living room, and then Spike burst into the kitchen. For a second they just stared at each other in silence, Dawn's chant interrupted by the look of confusion and genuine concern on Spike's face. She'd known that he would smell the blood as soon as it wafted down to the basement, but she'd been confident that she would be able to complete the spell before that happened. 

He took a cautious step towards her. She thought she saw anger in his expression, which wouldn't be at all surprising. It reminded her of when he used to threaten her with ridiculously grisly death every time she did something stupid or dangerous. The violent descriptions had quickly become oddly comforting, because at least they meant he noticed whether she was OK. The surprising thing was how quickly the controlled anger now gave way to pure concern. He looked at her in a way he hadn't since last year- at least, not while she was paying attention. Like he didn't know what to do, and was worried that he'd somehow failed her. Like he cared.

_ Why the heck is that surprising? He cared about you even before he got a soul. Why did you expect him to stop now? In what universe does undergoing torture for the chance to become a better person signify a lack of caring? _

"Dawn?" 

He made her name sound like a hundred different things-  _ Put the knife down. It'll be OK. Tell me what's wrong. You're important. I'll protect you. I'm sorry. Please don't do this, Bit.  _ If she hadn't already finished the spell, it would have been enough to stop her. She hadn't realized just how fragile her resolve was.

"I have to do this," said Dawn, but it sounded false even to her.

Her statement fell on an empty kitchen. The house, full of whispering only a moment ago, was now so still that Dawn knew it was nearly empty. If she'd gotten the chance to think about it, she probably would have cried, because now she  _ couldn't _ tell him that she was sorry. She would never get the chance to tell Spike anything ever again.

"Is someone there?" 

Joyce walked into the kitchen, and they stared at each other for a full three seconds. Dawn was shocked to see her mother alive. Her mother looked shocked, too, but for very different reasons. 

"What's going on here?"

Dawn glanced at her arm, still covered in blood. She pulled the knife out, wincing at the pain. "It's not what it looks like, Mom."

"Who are you? What are you doing in my house?"

Dawn froze. "Mom? Don't you know who I am?"

It was definitely her mother, but she stared at Dawn as though she were a stranger. There was no sign of recognition before she spoke again. "What are you doing here?"

"I was, uh." Dawn looked back at the knife in her hand and decided it looked unnecessarily gruesome. Not to mention scary. She sheathed it, then tried again. "I need to speak to Buffy."

"Buffy? She's not here. Is this about vampires?"

"Yeah," said Dawn. She decided the situation did tangentially involve vampires, sort of. "Could you call her? I'll clean this mess up," she added, looking at the small puddle of blood on the kitchen island. Her mother was obviously shaken, but she went to get the phone. Dawn threw some paper towels on the blood puddle before washing her cut off in the sink. Ever-sharp or not, it occurred to her that she hadn't actually  _ cleaned  _ the knife before slashing herself with it. It was such a spur of the moment thing that the details got lost in the wake of the larger decision. She hadn't wanted to talk herself out of her own sacrifice.

Something about the sink seemed weird, and she realized with alarm that it was taller than it was before. Or, more accurately, she was now shorter. She tried to figure out why her body had regressed, but the spell's description had never been that specific. She'd simply assumed that her body, like her mind, would remain intact. She looked down at her chest and frowned. Her clothes, unchanged, hung somewhat loosely over a very girlish figure.  _ Yup. Barely pubescent.  _

"Willow? Yes, I need to speak to Buffy. Yes, it is." Joyce covered the receiver and looked at Dawn. "How urgent is this?"

"I can wait a few hours, if she's busy," said Dawn. She tried to nonchalantly stick her hands in her pockets, but very noticeably winced when it made the cut come into contact with the fabric of her clothes. It kind of ruined the effect. "Do you have any bandages?"

"Under the microwave," said Joyce, pointing. "Tell her to call me when she gets back. No. No, a girl I've never seen before is in my kitchen cutting herself with a knife, and she says she has to speak to Buffy. No, I don't. Well, at this point I really try not to think too hard about these things. Not yet. She doesn't seem the type. I don't think so. Thank you, Willow." Joyce hung up the phone and stared at Dawn, who was busy dressing the wound she'd given herself while trying really, really hard not to think about the implications of her own mother not remembering her. "So. Can I get you something, Miss...?"

"Dawn," said Dawn. "And I'm good, thanks. Though I wouldn't say no to ice cream."

"I'll see what I can do," said Joyce, opening the freezer. "Forgive me if this is a silly question, but you are a friend of Buffy's, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I guess that's what I am," said Dawn, trying to hide the quaver in her voice.  _ Be strong. You can do this. You're a sharp little girl with a sharp little knife, even if you're a little more little than usual. You have staked vampires. You have faced down a hellgod and lived to tell the tale. You can totally handle this nobody having any idea who you are thing. _

"You guess?" Joyce was frowning at her, probably trying to determine whether she was some kind of demon. Dawn tried not to take offense. After all, demons totally did look like innocent little kids sometimes, and the situation with Eve had reminded everyone that you couldn't always rely on appearances to distinguish the humans from the incorporeal entities of pure evil.

"Well, I don't know how she's going to react. But I'm totally here to help," clarified Dawn. She was again overwhelmed by the fact that her mother was  _ alive.  _ She tried to stamp down the feeling to keep herself from tackle-hugging the lady currently doling out double fudge ice cream.

"What exactly does Buffy need help with?" 

"Oh, you know, the usual. Apocalypse stuff."  _ Jeez, mom didn't give Spike the third degree when he came over and asked for hot chocolate. Oh gosh, Spike. Is he still evil? What year is it? If mom is here, it's definitely before the tower, and Buffy's already graduated from high school, but other than that _ -

"There's an apocalypse coming?" Her mother looked truly alarmed, like apocalypses weren't business as usual around here.

"Well, uh, no. Not exactly. Not right now? Not to be weird, but what's the date?"

"January 18th, 2000," said Joyce, handing her a bowl with two scoops in it.

"Oh," said Dawn, picturing the timeline in her room and placing herself. She was about eight months before the little flashy diamond labeled  _ Dawn is created.  _ "Oh, crap."

Meaning Dawn was now stuck in the body of a thirteen-year-old girl, despite the fact that she had never actually  _ been  _ a thirteen-year-old girl. Technically, she ought to be a glowing ball of green light right now, since the monks had very obviously done neither the transformation spell nor the memory alteration yet. Was she the only Key, or was the past version of her still in play? Why would she regress if there were two of them? Why wouldn't mom remember her if she was going to regress to a state she was never in before? The whole thing made her head spin. She checked the impulse to run to Willow, knowing Willow would have no idea who she was. Maybe Andrew would listen to her, if she could figure out where he lived. She suspected that Andrew would jump at the chance to talk about time travel with anyone, even if "anyone" was a thirteen-year-old girl he had never seen before. She realized with a start that Andrew hadn't killed anyone yet. If she could get to him before he joined the trio, he might not turn evil! The trio might not even form, and Warren might never kill Tara! Woah, were Willow and Tara even dating yet?

"Is that bad? Is it too late?"

Dawn blinked and brought her reeling thoughts back to her very alive and very worried mother. Who didn't remember who she was. "No, it's way earlier than it's supposed to be. Man, the stuff with the Initiative hasn't even gone down yet."

"I'm sorry, are you saying you can see the future? Are you some kind of witch? Or a demon?"

"Nah," said Dawn, stabbing a spoon into her ice cream and sounding about a thousand times more self-assured than she actually was. "I'm a time traveler."


	2. Chapter 2

Buffy decided to skip calling and run right over to her mom's house. The idea of a strange girl sitting in her kitchen and cutting herself with a knife sounded distinctly the opposite of good. She didn't even bother ringing the doorbell, just barreled in the front door. 

Her mother was eating ice cream with a young girl with a bandage on her arm. She certainly didn't  _ look _ like a demon. She looked like a middle-schooler- pale, weak, mostly limbs, and very into her double fudge ice cream. A human, the sort of person Buffy was supposed to protect.

"I heard someone wanted to see me?" said Buffy, trying for lighthearted and mostly making it.

"Yeah, I need to tell you some stuff," said the girl.

"Spill. And no cryptic, because I am totally over weird strangers showing up with cryptic warnings. State your business and get a move on," replied Buffy.

For a moment the girl looked hurt, like she was really looking forward to giving cryptic hints or something. "I'm your sister, and I came from the future to warn you about a hellgod that's going to try to kill you because she wants to destroy the entire multiverse."

Buffy pretty much stopped listening after the first three words. "You're my  _ sister _ ?"

"Yeah," said the girl, obviously not comfortable with Buffy's incredulous response.

Buffy made a token effort not to jump to conclusions, and promptly gave up when she realized how freakish it was for a random stranger to claim she was her  _ sister.  _ "Is this a mystical prophecy thing? Or are you saying you're a slayer? Is Faith dead?"

"No, I'm your biological sister," insisted the girl.

_ Which makes no sense. Unless-  _ "Did dad have an affair or something? How old are you?"

"It's not like that! There were these monks-"

"Oh, so now people are having affairs with monks. Did you know about this, mom?"

"I've never seen her before," confessed her mother.

"Buffy, listen to me," said the girl. "I know it's weird, but-"

"It's not  _ weird _ . It's impossible. I don't have a sister." 

She hadn't meant for the words to come out sounding as harsh as they did, but it obviously didn't work. The girl's face shriveled up like she was about to cry. Before any tears could be shed, she tried to rush past Buffy and out into the night. Buffy figured she would have been totally justified in letting her (hello, she wasn't a babysitter), but she wasn't in the habit of making little girls run away crying. So she grabbed her.

"Let me go!" screamed the girl. It was a terrible, ungodly scream- if Buffy had ever heard a sound that was physically painful to listen to, it would have been that scream. At the same time, the girl made almost no attempt to struggle. She was obviously upset, but she didn't seem afraid.

"Calm down. Look, I have no idea who you are, but we can talk about this. Now sit back down."

The girl made a heavy sighing sound, then reluctantly sat on the couch again. "We can come back to the sister part. The  _ important _ thing is that I'm from the future, and I've traveled back in time to prevent an apocalypse."

"Solid reason," said Buffy.

" _ I  _ thought so," said the girl, as though there had been disagreement on this point. "The easiest way to stop it is to prevent your death, and given that you're my  _ sister _ , I sort of want to avoid that anyway."

"Also solid. Down with the not dying," said Buffy. She felt like she should be surprised by the revelation that she was dead in the future, but- ah, screw it. Most slayers didn't live half as long as she had, and she didn't know how far in the future the kid came from. Of course she was dead there- or  _ then,  _ as the case might be. It occurred to her that she was already buying into the time travel thing, at least for the sake of discussion, and that was maybe a little naïve. But given how much weird stuff she'd seen, it could just as easily be naïve  _ not _ to believe her.

"There's this god, OK? Named Glory. And she's gonna try to kill you. And me. And- do you even know Tara? Anyway. She's gonna try to kill a bunch of people, and you're not gonna be able to stop her without giving your own life. Er- I mean, that's what happened last time. But it doesn't have to happen that way this time, because I'm warning you."

"Cool," said Buffy, taking the news in stride.  _ I was killed by a god, and I took her out with me? If I have to be killed in combat, I guess that's the way to go. Yay future-me. _

"But I overshot the mark, so she isn't going to show up for, like, almost a year."

"Also cool," said Buffy, though she was kind of hoping she'd get to live longer than just one more year. "I take it this lady has weaknesses?"

The girl's eyes widened. "Uh... no, actually. That's what made her so scary. She's unkillable."

Buffy blinked in confusion. "But I thought you said-"

"I don't actually know how we killed her last time, but I'm  _ pretty sure _ \- the only way to actually get rid of her is to kill Ben. Her, uh, human host."

Buffy's mind ground to a halt. "You want me to kill a human?"

The girl frowned, like she had somehow forgotten that she was calling for murder. "Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do."

"An innocent human being? Is that what I'm hearing?"

"I  _ guess _ . He  _ did  _ try to kill me, but I guess that was arguably just because  _ he _ didn't want to die. So, I mean-"

"No," said Buffy.

The girl's mouth fell open, like she hadn't even considered the possibility that Buffy might be  _ against murder. _ "But-"

"No," repeated Buffy, more surely this time. "I don't kill humans."

"But you  _ have _ to," said the girl. 

"Look, even if you're on the level with this time travel thing, there has to be another way. There always is. If you've got any other information on this thing, then I'll be happy to hear it, but I'm not going along with any plan that requires me to murder innocent people. If that breaks your brain for the moment, it's just as well. It's late. We can finish this another time."

The girl stared at her in shock for another few seconds before she seemed to realize that that was her cue to leave. Her eyes narrowed, but she did stand up and walk over to the door. She slammed it on the way out, and Buffy belatedly remembered that she hadn't wanted to send the kid out after dark. Oh well. She could probably take care of herself, if she was powerful enough to travel through time.

"Do you actually believe any of that, Buffy?" asked her mother. Buffy was kind of surprised that she'd stayed quiet during all the slayer talk.

"The 'murder is bad' stuff? I do have  _ some  _ standards, mom."

Her mother smiled at that, but it looked forced. "I meant the part about you dying."

"Oh." Of course that would be what mom would focus on. "Well, it doesn't sound that far-fetched. Much less weird than the actual time travel. Being the slayer isn't exactly the safest job around, and I imagine the presence of raging hellgods would make it even worse." She frowned. "Crap, I didn't even get her name."

"The hellgod?"

"The girl," said Buffy. She actually did remember the god's name: Glory. Lucky it was actually something easy to pronounce this time. How often did that happen? "I mean, she is in the pro-murder camp, but I still feel kind of rude forgetting stuff like that."

"Her name was Dawn," supplied her mother.

_ Dawn, huh? _

If nothing else, it wasn't the sort of name you wanted to immediately run away from. Kind of the opposite. It made her think of sunlight, which was inextricably linked to safety. Sunlight, safety, and new beginnings- all very good things, as far as Buffy was concerned.

_ Wouldn't it be super ironic if she turned out to be pure evil? _

\---

Dawn didn't let herself cry until she was well out of sight of the house. She knew it was stupid, but she felt a certain sense of betrayal that Buffy would even let her run out like this. She always used to be so worried about her- but of course, that was back when people remembered who she was. Everyone had been angry about having their memories altered, but now Dawn was wondering if the monks weren't actually much smarter than they'd given them credit for. She would have hated to be brought into the world without a starter pack of friends and family.

Without her slayer-based support structure, Dawn had no idea where to run. Her first thought was Giles. He'd never much liked her, but if anybody would know about time travel or its effects, it would be him. It was a plan, if not a good plan. She ran across town to his house.

She pounded on the door and rang the bell several more times than was necessary or polite, but nothing inside the house stirred. His car was in the driveway, so evidently he was there, but not waking up. Stuck outside in the middle of the night, every little noise made her want to jump out of her skin. Dawn was suddenly very glad that her knife had traveled through time with her. It wouldn't do a whole lot of good against a vampire, but it was better than nothing. Even so, she had to find shelter.

She ran through her options. Willow was living with Buffy, and even if Dawn hadn't just left her house, the university was too far. Xander was an option, but her timeline told her that he was still living in his parent's basement, and she  _ really  _ didn't want to deal with his parents. That left Spike's crypt. It wasn't ideal, but she knew he was chipped at this point, so it wasn't like he could hurt her. Staying with Spike sounded a  _ lot  _ safer than wandering around Sunnydale at 3 AM, so without giving the matter a second thought, she took off towards the cemetery. Nobody ever knocked at Spike's door, and since she wasn't about to break with tradition now, she waltzed right in.

The crypt looked like a crypt. Which is to say, it looked like a crypt that nobody had ever even thought about turning into a home. The sarcophagus was covered in dirt, and the corners were filled with cobwebs and dust. The ladder that normally led to the downstairs was not in evidence, just a dangerous-looking hole in the floor towards the back. Spike, obviously, was nowhere to be seen.

Dawn stared at the empty place for several minutes, hoping that if she kept watching, Spike would magically show up. When that didn't happen, she walked numbly outside, collapsed at the entrance, and gave up on trying not to cry. She was a little worried that her sobs would attract vampires to the area, but she decided that it didn't matter. After all, the whole point of coming back was to stop Glory's ritual. Maybe Buffy and the world would be better off if she had never existed at all. The Knights of Byzantium had certainly thought so. 

After several minutes of uncontrolled sobbing, her breathing became a little more even and her thoughts became a little more morbid. She looked at her white wrist and unsheathed Eversharp. Better her than the world, right? But as soon as she broke the skin, her sister's words flew into her mind. 

_ The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. _

Dawn stared at the small trickle of blood that was falling down the knife, and pulled it out again. Buffy had wanted her to live. She'd wanted her to live so badly that she was willing to give her own life in exchange for Dawn's. That settled it- as long as she had a shot, she had to find a way to save herself  _ and  _ the world. That was what Buffy would have wanted. The whole world might be against her- heck, it might not even know she existed- but Dawn was going to save it anyway, because that's what scoobies did.  _ One order of saving the world, hold the gratitude _ .

"Well, well. What's this? A little girl out in the cemetery all alone at night, and already bleeding. You'll attract all manner of beasties if you keep that up," said a distinctly British and very deliberately evil voice.

Dawn stood and whipped around immediately. Sure enough, there was Spike, holding a radio and grinning at her maliciously. Behind her tears, Dawn positively beamed. She wasn't going to say that she had never been so happy to see him, but this was a very close second to when he'd appeared to save her from Doc. Or, well, tried to.

"Spike! Thank God!"

His grin immediately turned into a scowl. "Oi! Don't you be thanking God for this! Do you have any idea what I am?"

"You're an evil vampire with a chip in his head who can't attack humans," said Dawn, in her best I-am-so-utterly-unimpressed voice. She tossed her hair and tried to look tough. "And you look kinda famished. Haven't you been eating?"

"Well, no, now that you mention it! Bit hard to do that when you can't attack people!"

"You're not buying pig's blood?"

Spike actually spat at her, which she really hadn't expected. The chip didn't appear to object. It did something- if not much- to dull Dawn's enthusiasm. "Stupid girl."

"I'm not stupid," said Dawn, frowning at the spit on her shirt. It was only a few hours ago that he'd called her sharp. Or, well, more like three years in the future, but still.

"Yeah, you are. Wandering around a cemetery, alone, at night? In Sunnyhell? You're lucky you're not already dead. Think I'll stick around and watch until someone else kills you for me. Little girl like you, ought to be safe at home in bed at this hour."

Dawn's frown deepened. She wasn't about to tell him that she didn't really have a home anymore. She suddenly realized that  _ he  _ didn't, either, which was probably why he looked so hungry. He'd just moved out after being the scoobies' hostage, and other concerns were secondary until he found a place to stay. Which was why he was at the crypt.

Except that she had gotten here first this time.

"This  _ is _ my home," she told him proudly. "It's basically the best crypt in the whole town. Two floors, sewer access, lots of space, and an electrical wire runs right below, so as soon as I get patched in I'll be able to watch TV and stuff. It's the only one with all those amenities." It was almost word for word what he'd once told her about why he never moved out, despite the fact that his enemies knew exactly where it was. She suspected he was just stubborn, but whatever.

"That right?" asked Spike, eyeing the place. "Well, soon as some beastie kills you, I'll be free to move in. Any minute now."

"Or you could, y'know, move in anyway."

"What?"

Dawn hadn't even stopped to think about how weird the invitation sounded, so she missed his complete lack of comprehension. She went on as if he were just making sure she meant it, not making sure he wasn't hallucinating. "You could take the downstairs or something, so you could have your own space. That'd be good. And the advantage to living with a super strong vampire is that you'll keep the rest of the monsters away." For the second time that night, Dawn tried to nonchalantly stick her hands in her pockets. Since she'd managed to cut herself again since then, she met with the same result, and ended up staring at her wounded wrist. 

"I am not living with some lack-brained girl who's dumb enough to invite a vampire into her home. If it even is your home, which I very much doubt," said Spike.

"What, so you're going to give up the undisputed best crypt in town because some girl happens to have gotten there first? That doesn't sound very evil."

"You watch your tongue, Platelet. Any second now, some other vamp is gonna come drink you dry. Soon as I kill him, I'll have your place all to myself."

Dawn considered doing something very stupid, but decided against it on the grounds that it was, well, stupid. And that Buffy would probably have an aneurism if she found out. Then she remembered that Buffy probably didn't care about her at all anymore, and that this entire going back in time thing was turning out to be pretty stupid in the first place, so one more stupid decision probably wasn't going to make much difference. 

She held out her bloody wrist to the extremely hungry vampire. "Want some?"

\---

Spike couldn't decide if he admired the girl's foolhardy courage, or if she was the most dimwitted creature on earth. As soon as she offered him her blood, he decided that it was the latter. But hey, he was evil, and he hadn't had human blood in a solid month. "Yeah, alright."

He'd almost forgotten how sweet human blood tasted- he'd gone without for far too long. Too quickly, she pulled her wrist away and inspected it. He would have taken it back and drunk more of the delicious stuff, but he was beginning to actually remember the chip before he tried attacking people. "Alright, you should be good now. Wish I had another bandage. I've gotta stop cutting myself on this thing," she said, apparently to herself. She held out her hand again, only this time it was obviously for a handshake. "It's Dawn, by the way."

The sky was lightening behind her, the sun just under the horizon. "Looks like."

"No, I mean, people call me Dawn. Or, well, technically nobody calls me anything anymore, but if they  _ did _ , they would call me Dawn." Spike ignored her outstretched hand. He really wished he could tear her throat out. She wouldn't be making those annoying sounds then, and he could get to the rest of the blood that was pump-pump-pumping away through that little heart of hers. He noticed with some displeasure that her heartbeat was completely even, as though he didn't inspire even the tiniest amount of fear in her. Another reason she was obviously dim. "So, why do you have a radio?"

Spike stared at the radio in his hand. He hadn't wanted to leave Xander's place empty-handed, and this was the result. He wasn't even sure the thing worked. "Nicked it."

"From who? Not a store, cuz that thing looks too beat up to be sold in a secondhand shop." Her nose scrunched up. "You take it from Giles?"

"You know the watcher?"

"I guess you could say that. He never liked me," said Dawn. "Then again, nobody does right now, and that's OK. I don't need them."

She spoke the words with such conviction that despite her red and swollen face, he felt a flicker of kinship for the girl. He told himself it was just the chip- normally he would have killed her by now, and her personality was only distracting him because he couldn't do that. "Well, yeah, I wager you don't. Nancy boy never did any good for anybody."

Dawn shrugged. "You know, the sun is coming up. You should come inside before you fry."

She was right. "You're a real idiot, inviting a vamp into your living space."

"Well, you're an evil vampire," she said matter-of-factly, "which means taking advantage of people's idiocy is basically your job description."

She had a point, and he felt like he was starting to sizzle, so he walked into her crypt and set his radio down on the sarcophagus. "God, I'm going to be stuck in this dank place all day."

"Yeah, it kind of sucks right now," she agreed. "We can see about furniture later, but right now any money I get is going towards food and blood. Speaking of which, I'll be back before dusk."

"There is no we!" he called, but she was already striding out into the sunlight. Bloody hell. At least she hadn't insisted on tying him up while she went out. When he realized that made this an upgrade compared to yesterday, he felt an unusually strong desire to kill someone. But of course, he couldn't do that. He really was doomed.


	3. Chapter 3

Dawn was as good as her word, arriving with a pint of pig's blood, a band-aid on her wrist, and a bag of various other things sometime before noon. Spike didn't ask how she got any of it. He considered refusing the pig's blood on principle, but he was still hungry. The blood would spoil soon, and he was obviously not getting any more human for a good long while. He swallowed his pride along with the blood and drank. While she ate her own food, she arranged her new belongings on the floor. It wasn't particularly impressive- a packaged sandwich, a deck of cards with serious water damage, some beat-up notebooks, some pens, a couple shirts and a pair of sweatpants that looked like they'd been stolen from a Goodwill donation bin, and an army green sleeping bag that smelled very distinctly of dead cat. There was also a pack of cigarettes, which she promptly tossed to him. That, at least, she had to have stolen.

"So you're serious about the whole living in a crypt thing," he said, pulling out his lighter. Apart from smoking, he realized that he had nothing better to do than converse. The 'sewer access' Dawn had spoken of consisted of a couple mostly-blocked pipes that ran through the hole she referred to as 'downstairs', so he couldn't get out that way without doing a fair bit of digging. He'd tried and failed to get some electricity to power the radio, but while he thought he could get it working if given enough time, he was going to need more materials. For later, when the girl was dead and he had the place to himself.

"Yeah," she said simply, looking for clear spaces to write in the notebooks. "The other option is to go crawling to Giles, and I don't really want to do that. Once it's fixed up it won't be so bad."

Spike had to admit that he could easily see the place's potential. Dank as it was right now, it had a good layout, and the possible access to electricity was a definite bonus. "Planning on furniture? You could do the sarcophagus as a bed."

"Over there's gonna be the kitchen," she said, motioning to a part of the room that had space for a fridge and a couple of cutting boards. "And over there's where the TV goes. And that's where you'd put the recliner, or maybe a couch. Could go either way. It still needs a ladder, too, to get to the downstairs."

Her vision for the place was remarkably similar to his own, and she seemed to be very confident about it. "You'll have trouble getting a recliner in. You being all bitty and all."

She waved the concern away. "I'll find someone to help me carry it. It'll work out." She yawned. "Ugh. It's probably been, like, forty hours since I went to sleep last. There was the raid on Caleb's vineyard, and then nobody slept all day because they were reeling from the fight, and then the spell was  _ that  _ night, and then there was another night. I guess it's lucky I didn't fall asleep before I got back here." 

Spike ignored her and whatever she was talking about, opting to help himself to the cards and prepare for a game of solitaire. Dawn settled in on the dead cat sleeping bag. "Wake me up at dusk, 'kay?"

Spike snorted. He'd do no such thing, and he suspected the girl was too tired to care. When dusk finally did arrive, he promptly left, threatened a man into giving him about thirty dollars- sodding cheapskate- and bought a bag full of various other essentials. He was in decently high spirits when he made his way back to the crypt, hoping that Platelet would be a thing of the past. He'd behead whoever killed her and take over the place himself. It was just as he was getting back to the crypt that he noticed the Fyarl demon, and at once felt even more pleased. "Oh, a demon. That would be, oh, right. The things I can kill."

"Spike. Wonderful, a perfect end to a perfect day," sighed the Fyarl. 

There was something terribly familiar about the way the Fyarl demon spoke to him. Spike frowned. "Giles?"

"Go on, then. Let's get with the fighting- you understand me?"

"Of course I understand you."

"I'm speaking English?"

"No, you're speaking Fyarl. I happen to speak Fyarl. And by the way, why the hell are you suddenly a Fyarl demon? You just come over all demony this morning?" Spike was used to strange happenings on the hellmouth by now, but between that Dawn chit inviting him into her crypt and Giles suddenly turning into a demon, he was beginning to wonder if he hadn't actually staked himself last week and ended up in some kind of increasingly ridiculous afterlife.

"As a matter of fact, I did."

It was at that moment that Dawn came stumbling out of the crypt's entrance. "Told you to wake me up," she said, weakly punching Spike in the arm.

"Vampire, Platelet. Not big on the whole promises thing."

"You are so," said Dawn. And it irked him, because she was right, he did have a tendency to take his promises seriously. Unless they were outright lies, he stuck to his deals. How the hell did she know that?

"I didn't realize you were consorting with children," said Giles, the disgust in his demon voice apparent. Spike hoped he didn't look as offended as he felt. He might be evil, but he had standards, damn it. He just wasn't sure he wanted that fact getting out.

Dawn seemed to notice the Fyarl demon for the first time. Rather than scream and hide, as Spike might have expected, the girl simply gave it an unenthusiastic wave. "Hey, Giles."

Giles looked about as baffled as he could with his Fyarl face. "You can understand me, too?"

The girl turned back to Spike. "What's he saying?"

"Wants to know if you can speak Fyarl."

"Nope. Just Sumerian, Turkish, Latin, Greek, and some sub-par Spanish. I'm working on French, but no demon languages yet."

The girl didn't look old enough to be in high school, and already she spoke almost as many languages as he did. Well, she didn't need to brag about it. "How did you recognize him, then?"

Dawn graced him with a devilish smirk, which looked somewhat less ridiculous on her than he might have expected. "Stop me if I'm wrong. Giles got transformed into a demon by Ethan Rayne last night, and now he's gotta find him before he leaves town and make him undo the transformy mojo. And he's gonna ask you to help."

"Good lord," said Giles, sounding like he might actually faint. Under different circumstances, Spike would've found it hard not to snicker at the image of a Fyarl demon fainting. "Who is she?"

"'S what I'm wondering," said Spike. 

"I know where Ethan is," said Dawn, obviously enjoying her chance to be mysterious. "We can help."

Spike didn't like the sound of that. "We?"

Dawn nodded at him, perfectly serious. "I don't know how to drive, and Giles is too big to drive, and the driving might get  _ exciting.  _ So yeah, we're gonna need you along."

"Hello, evil. Got no reason to help you sodding white hats."

"I can pay you money," said Giles, reasonably.

Spike changed his tune immediately. "Ooh, I like money. How much?"

"I want three hundred dollars," said Dawn. "Two for Spike and one for me."

"I, uh. I can do that," said Giles.

"What's he say?"

"Says he'll do it," said Spike, the venom momentarily leaving his voice. "Alright, tell us where the motel is."

"See, I don't actually-"

"You said you knew!"

"I do, I just don't know the address or anything. I'd better just gonna come along," said the girl.

Great, more yapping. He consciously shifted into game face and gave her a wicked grin. "Sure you're not afraid to be alone with us monsters?"

Dawn looked at him like he was a complete idiot. "Let's go."

Despite the company, Spike found the mission a decent distraction from his lately less-than-optimal unlife. Dawn gave fairly sensible directions from the backseat of Giles's beat-up car, and Spike made nearly civil conversation with demon-Giles. It helped that Giles was in a ridiculously violent and impulsive mood, which Spike delighted in setting loose on the town. At one point the watcher actually got out of the car and scared a passing woman. Minutes later, both he and Giles were still laughing about it. Dawn once again looked at him like he was an idiot, glaring at him in the rearview mirror. A moment later he saw something else in the mirror, and sped up.

"Commandos. Looks like we have company."

"Initiative," supplied Dawn. "You probably wanna get out of the car, Giles. Motel's at the end of this street on the right, room 124."

"Right, I'll go then," said Giles.

"Oi! Maybe I want to keep you around, spilt the goons attention while I make a break for it," said Spike. Giles offered them another hundred, and in a moment he was leaping out of the car, nearly tearing the door off in the process.

"They're catching up," said Dawn. "You got this, right?"

"Lemme put it this way, Bit," said Spike, rolling across two lanes. "If anyone can shake these gits, it'd be me."

She didn't argue with him. In fact, her glare had been replaced by a look of true admiration, like she didn't doubt that he could do absolutely anything if he set his mind to it. It made him feel a bit better, considering how many people had written him off as toothless in the last few weeks. When he did finally shake the last of the soldier boys, he was so wrapped up in the moment that he ran right into a wall. He exulted in the mayhem even as he staggered out of the wreckage, forgetting completely about the little girl in the back seat until he heard her ungodly high-pitched shriek. Niblet had a set of lungs. She crawled out through a window, apparently uninjured, though her heart was hammering faster than it had at any point in the less than a day that he'd known her. It was only a moment before she drew herself up and marched over to him.

"You are insane," she informed him.

"Maybe a bit," he allowed, unable to keep the grin off his face.

"So, we should probably get away from the wreck before the cops show," she said, walking off in an apparently random direction. He fell into step beside her. The girl obviously had a death wish, yeah. Bitty little slayer or something. But on the other hand, there wasn't any reason she couldn't be that and admirably courageous at the same time. "Wanna see if we can find a recliner at the dump?"

"Yeah, alright." He didn't bother to contradict the assumption that they would both be dragging the ratty thing back to the crypt. Might be easier to find the prize with a second pair of eyes, and besides, he'd be alone once the other vampires in the cemetery wised up. Until then, he'd had worse roommates. Many of them in the past few weeks. 

"Cool. So, you know anything about how we can hook up a TV? Cuz I know a lot of stuff, but electrical engineering's not on the list."

"I could figure it out. That's priority number one, you know. I don't want to miss  _ Passions _ ."

She giggled. It wasn't the sort of sound a vampire ought to appreciate, but somehow he didn't mind so much.

\--- 

"This one's mostly intact. I think the cushion's moldy, though," said Dawn, eying a metal stool. "It doesn't need a cushion, does it?"

"Not unless you can find a better one. Metal's better than wood. Wood's dangerous, and it'll rot if it gets wet," said Spike, from behind another mound of trash. She heaved the metal stool towards the pile of interesting-looking stuff they'd found. Most of it was indistinguishable from the surrounding junk, unless you knew what you were looking for. She wondered whether Spike had made a habit of going to junkyards at any point in his past, but she wasn't sure why he would have. He was probably about as new at this as she was.

"Find a recliner yet?"

"Nah. But- hey, look at this! TV looks like it might still work."

Dawn did the funny little dance that was required to navigate the dump without falling into a puddle of pure nastiness. When she finally did get around to him, she nodded approvingly. The TV was obviously old, but it didn't look like there was any serious internal damage. "Wanna just haul it back and come back for more some other time? I dunno how long we have until sunrise."

"Another three hours, at least. We have time," said Spike, reclining against a mangled old mattress. "Anything else you want?"

Dawn shrugged. "Lots of stuff. Some of it we'll probably have to buy. I doubt we're going to find a working mini-fridge around here."

"You might be surprised. But yeah, we will need some money eventually. Any plans on that?"

"I haven't thought about it much. It's not like I've got contact information. Or like I have a legal identity. Or like I'm old enough to work." She frowned. "This sucks."

"Welcome to life in the underworld, Bit," smiled Spike. He lit another cigarette. She wondered how many he usually went through in a day, and then reminded herself that it was so totally not her concern. She couldn't even legally buy them, so there was no way anything  _ she  _ earned was going towards his yucky smoking habit.

"I'll figure something out. I've got skills. Worst-case scenario, I can swipe stuff until I work out something legitimate. Normally I'd say I'm past that phase, but I think I can make an exception to avoid literally starving to death."

"That right? Experienced little urchin, eh?"

"No," snapped Dawn. She would have been even more annoyed if he'd assumed she was just making stuff up, but Spike had a talent for making every conceivable response sound as annoying as possible. "I've just got a lot of practice shoplifting. Half of it I learned from you anyway. Though you never did teach me how to pick locks." His eyebrows shot up, and Dawn chuckled. "Y'know how I knew about your chip, and about Giles's demon thing?" He waited for her to continue. He was wearing his I'm-interested-but-I'm-not-going-to-tell-you-that face, which Dawn had gotten pretty good at recognizing. She considered going for drama, but it came out like she was good-naturedly bragging to him about a good test score. She'd done that more than once with him, back in the day. "I'm an artificial human from the future."

"That's a new one," said Spike.

"Yeah. I'm not supposed to exist yet, so nobody remembers me. It kinda sucks."

"Sounds like it. What is this, change the past to fix the future?"

"Something like that. Though it's more like stop the world from totally ending. Gonna make Acathla look like cake if we don't do something about it. Of course, it's going to be kinda rough given that Buffy won't listen to anything I say."

"She's like that. I've found that 'I want to save the world' generally stops her in her tracks."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Only cuz you're evil. I tried that, and she didn't care."

"Gotta try again, I expect," said Spike, like he was dishing out actual good advice. Come to think of it, that wasn't surprising- Spike was a proverbial fountain of good advice, even when he was evil. It was just that most of his advice wasn't family-friendly, and there was usually some really bad advice mixed in. Learning anything from Spike required full use of a person's critical thinking skills, but in Dawn's experience, it was generally well worth the effort.

"So what about you? Any particular plans?"

"One, get this chip out," he said, gesturing to his head. "Two, become an evil monster again. Three, kill the slayer and brag about ending three of 'em."

"Ambitious," said Dawn, trying to sound approving despite the fact that his goal made her stomach turn. Not so long ago, she'd asked him if he loved her sister, and if her timeline was right, that was just before the attempted rape. Not exactly the reaction Dawn was hoping for. If he could hurt her that badly when he was head over heels for Buffy, Dawn figured she'd better take him at his word when he said he wanted to kill her. She'd just have to make sure he didn't get the chance. Maybe it was a good thing she was keeping an eye on him, as long as she remembered that he was totally serious about the murder thing.

"Yeah, well, sky's the limit and all that," said Spike. "I'll grant you it's not as useful as saving the world, but hey."

"I didn't have anything better to do," admitted Dawn.

"Hey, that can't be true. You must have known me, yeah?"

"Yup. You're the only person who doesn't treat me like a little kid all the time, so that's cool. And you're the only person who's as strong as Buffy, which is also cool. Except maybe Faith, but I think she's in a coma right now." That was the trouble, really- Dawn sort of wanted to like Spike, because she knew he could be a fairly good person under the right circumstances. He was also, without a doubt, one of the coolest people she knew. Remembering the "actual serial killer" bit was going to be sort of hard.

He grinned, unaware of her inner turmoil. "So, you can tell the future. Tell me whether I get this bloody chip out, whether I kill Buffy? Get Dru back? The lot?"

She smiled, hoping it looked more confident than she felt. "I  _ could. _ "

"But you won't," he finished. "Color me completely unsurprised. You know, trick like that could probably find you some cash. Figure there are all sorts of demons that'd want to know what's in store for them."

"It's not like I'm a seer. I just know about you and Giles because I happened to know you guys. Plus I read his watcher diaries, which is how I found out about the Fyarl demon story. But I can't tell just any old person's future."

"Figures. You'll have to earn your keep like the rest of us."

"What about you? Got any plans to make money?"

He shrugged. "What'd I do last time?"

"You were poor last time."

"Oh. Huh."

"You could start a mercenary business," said Dawn. It was half serious suggestion and half ridiculous fantasy- precisely the kind of thing that seemed to appeal to Spike. "I mean, you can kill demons, and there've gotta be lots of people who'd pay you to kill the right demons around here. It'd be violent, and lucrative, and exciting, and give Buffy less than no reason to stake you. Totally your speed. Oh, and I could handle clients and stuff, keep everything organized-"

"Hold up, Bit. Do you know the first thing about what you're talking about? That'd make me enemies with the whole demon underworld."

"Not the nice ones," objected Dawn. "Cuz you wouldn't be killing the nice ones. And you only play poker with the nice ones anyway."

"I do not! And yeah, I'd have to kill whoever they paid me to kill, including the 'nice' ones."

"Nuh-uh. It's not like you let them make you sign a contract. They'd be all 'Spike, a pair of vampires is threatening to kill me if I don't pay off my debt by tonight! Please slay them!'"

"Sounds heroic," snorted Spike.

"You come out with stakes, and the vamps are all 'two against one, easy!' And you have an epic fight and they get dusty. Then you go back to the client and say 'all in a night's work, sir'. Not the sir part, because you'd never call anybody that. But then they pay you for doing something you had fun doing anyway," continued Dawn, practically acting out the explanation. She knew her various voices were terrible, but it was fun anyway. Maybe Andrew was rubbing off on her.

"Tempting," said Spike, but she couldn't tell if he was actually tempted.

"You should think about it. It'd totally earn you more than scaring random people on the street. Be more fun, too." She looked up at the sky, wondering if it was getting any lighter. "So, home?"

"Home. Grab whatever you want, I got the TV," said Spike, dropping his cigarette and stamping on it. She grabbed the metal stool and followed him out of the dump, thinking happily about all the cool stuff Spike could do as a mercenary vampire. Things were looking ever-so-slightly up, and she was sorta-kinda-maybe-almost friends with Spike. Who still wanted to kill her sister, but hey. Dawn had learned by now that it was easier to look for clouds with silver linings than to expect anything resembling an actual gift while living on the hellmouth. It was all about learning to appreciate what you had. Right now, she had a chipped vampire and a beat-up TV, and she figured that was a lot better than nothing.

\---

Spike hadn't intended to tell Dawn that he was seriously considering her mercenary idea, but as usual, she was in exactly the right position to pick up whatever scraps of information she wanted.  He found her working the cash register at the local magic shop. He didn't trust magic, as a rule, but it was also the best place to pick up a few solid anti-demon weapons. Spike didn't feel like getting himself killed before he managed to kill Buffy. 

"Nice battleaxe ya got there," observed Dawn. "Gonna cost you a pretty penny, though."

"What are you even doing here, Bit?"

She crossed her arms and glared at him. "Human living expenses are  _ crazy  _ expensive, even without having an actual house. Since I'd prefer not to spend tomorrow eating out of a dumpster somewhere, I'm taking steps to get money. My only marketable skills involve mostly theoretical knowledge of magic and the ability to translate stuff from five or so languages, and both of those are prerequisites for working here. They pay more than minimum wage, and apparently magic shops are understanding about the whole 'I don't have contact info because I kinda sorta live in a crypt' thing. Not that I told them that," she added hurriedly. "I think they're just happy to have someone who understands magical theory and doesn't have a face made out of snakes."

"You said you weren't old enough to work."

She smirked like she'd just won first prize in a school science fair. " _ They  _ don't know that. It's illegal, OK, but it meets my standards for earning an honest living, and that's all I care about. So, you gonna buy the battleaxe in the next five minutes? Cuz I get a percent, and my shift's almost over." Spike handed over a wad of cash, and Dawn tucked several hundred dollars away in the register before looking up at him. "Uh, anything else?"

"Said your shift's over in five?"

She nodded. He wasn't going to  _ say  _ he would walk her back to the crypt, so he simply browsed until she was done, and they left the store together. No reason to let the girl walk home without protection from Sunnydale's nasties, especially now that she was making herself useful.

"So, where'd you get the money?" she began, seizing the chance to converse about something.

"Advance pay. I clear out a shed full of Saralu demons, and I get twice that when the job is done. Saralu don't die until you cut the tails off, so I figured it'd be good to have a blade handy."

"It's always best to have a weapon on hand," said Dawn.

"S'pose so. Though there's something to be said for fighting with nothing but your own skills. Fists and fangs and sod all else. Miss that."

"Well, I miss living in a house with indoor plumbing. We can't always have what we want," snarked the kid. Spike raised an eyebrow. He wondered how much her sense of humor had been shaped by him. How well, precisely, had they known each other? Well enough that she felt safe living with him, which was something of a blow to his vampire pride- but then again, the kid apparently felt safe enough living in a crypt by herself, so it might not mean very much. "Speaking of which, can we get indoor plumbing? Cuz I dunno if you pee, but you totally do have to shower, so it's not like it'd be just for me," continued Dawn.

"We can't always get what we want," said Spike, enjoying the girl's scowl of disapproval. On the other hand, it was a very real concern. He reminded himself to look into it as soon as he got enough money that buying blood was no longer a financial hardship.

"So, I guess Giles hasn't paid us yet?"

"Not yet. He will, though. Watcher boy and his team of do-gooders are all into that whole honor business," said Spike.

"Not always," muttered Dawn.

"You know something I don't?"

"Lotsa stuff," she chirped. "And if you're good, I'll tell you some of it."

"Then I say ignorance is bliss," returned Spike. Dawn shrugged like she didn't care, as though she consorted with black hats every day. For all he knew, she did.

They approached the crypt door, and Dawn ducked inside. "Hey, do you think the crypt actually counts as a human house?"

"No idea. Just don't invite the nasties in. And if they come in anyway, scream real loud and hope to God that someone else hears you, because I'm off."

The girl pulled out a knife from the sheath at her hip and brandished it menacingly. "And if nobody does, plan C is decapitation."

"You know what? I see why Mum and Dad are making you live in a crypt."

She stuck her tongue out at him. Brat. If he was lucky, she'd be dead by morning. What was he even doing, walking her back like he cared whether she met any of those nasties? 

It wasn't until he came home an hour before sunrise, covered in Saralu gore and several hundred dollars richer, that he remembered. She was curled up on the dead cat sleeping bag, staring at the entrance and clutching the knife, even as she hugged her knees to herself. There were tears on her face, but it looked like she had finished her crying a while ago. "See any nasties?" he asked.

She shook her head, sniffling. "You get the demons?"

"Yeah."

"Cool," she said, sheathing the knife and curling up on her side. "See ya in the morning." 

She was quiet then, and after a few minutes her breathing evened out. Third night out in the cemetery, all alone except for the murderous vampire a few yards away, and the kid was sleeping because she knew she had to keep her strength up somehow. She was going to survive- if he took her word for it, she was going to  _ save the world.  _ Maybe some part of him was reminded of himself, way back when he was first turned and decided he'd do great things or die trying. Angelus had tried to beat the tendency out of him, but look how that turned out.

If there was one thing Spike  _ wasn't _ , it was another bloody Angelus. The ponce couldn't handle an upstart with ambitions, but Spike thought the whole thing was marvelous. This Dawn kid had heart, and that was reason enough to like the girl. She'd sink or she'd swim, but if she happened to swim, then Spike sure as hell wasn't going to get in her way.

\---

Giles put off going back to the crypt as long as he could, but after a week there was simply no excuse, even if Spike  _ was  _ unrepentantly evil. There was still that girl to think about, assuming she wasn't a vampire herself. What she was doing with Spike was anyone's guess, but she must be rather desperate, and paying her was the least he could do. He went around lunchtime, and was surprised to find both of them sitting in the crypt. Spike was drinking blood mixed with God knows what else, and the girl was eating an apple. They appeared to be playing rummy, which was almost as surprising as the fact the girl was there at all.

"Hello, Rupert. Here to pay me for my services?" smiled Spike, without looking up from his hand. The girl did look up, and threw a half-hearted smile and wave in his direction. Evidently that was her usual reaction to him, not just brought on by his demon form the other night.

"Yes, I suppose I am," said Giles, fishing the money out of his wallet. "Who's winning?"

Spike jerked his head in the girl's direction, and the child smirked. " _ Dawn  _ here is obviously a professional gambler. 'S the only explanation."

"I should think she would be a professional student, at her age," said Giles. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

Dawn met his eyes for the first time, looking positively alarmed. "You mean in general, or now? Cuz right now it's my lunch hour."

"They give you a lunch hour at the middle school?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, they give me a lunch hour at  _ work.  _ The Magic Box. And speaking of work-"

"Yes, right," said Giles, handing over the two piles of cash. "That's three hundred for Spike and one hundred for, uh, Dawn, although honestly, I think she was significantly more helpful."

Dawn shrugged. "Spike's gonna pay for the stuff to hook the TV up, so it works out in the end."

"Right, then." He glanced at Spike, who was counting his money. Something about the way he and the girl were interacting caused Giles to think of his earlier musings on the situation. As a former watcher, of course, he realized that vampires were evil beings that were likely to do evil at every opportunity. He knew this- but Giles had also learned that there were exceptions to every rule, and now that he'd come to work with Spike, he wondered if the vampire wasn't more human than they had previously given him credit for. "You know, I was thinking about your affliction, and, uh, your newfound discovery that you can fight only demons; it occurs to me that, well, I realize this is completely against your nature, but-"

"Got another job for us?" chirped the girl. Spike looked up from his money for a moment, but didn't say anything to interrupt her.

"Not at the moment, no. But there's never any shortage of demonic activity in Sunnydale, and every advantage we have is worth pursuing," said Giles.

"Sure. But we're not exactly rich here, so I think you know what the catch is," she smirked.

"Money? You want me to pay you every time we need help?" asked Giles. He sounded a bit too incredulous even to himself.

"Well, yeah," said Spike. "What did you think we were gonna do, help you out of the evilness of our hearts?"

"I'm not evil," put in Dawn. "But I like being able to buy toothpaste. And food is nice. Taking out the forces of darkness for cash, that's kind of our shtick now."

"Not limited to darkness, bit," grinned Spike.

"And the forces of demonic vermin," she added, crinkling her nose. "We're turning out to be more like superpowered exterminators than legitimate mercenaries right now, so if you want to give us something more interesting to do, that'd be cool."

"You two are mercenaries," said Giles, making sure he had this right.

"Yep!"

"Yeah."

"I see," said Giles, wiping off his glasses. "Well then, the next time I have a situation that would benefit from the services of a vampire and a, uh, Dawn, I'll be sure to drop by and discuss it."

"Nice," said Dawn. "See? Tolja things were looking up."

"That they are," said Spike, laying down a group of cards as Dawn stuck her tongue out at him. "Not sure it'll help business in the long run, though, if it gets out that we're taking jobs from watcher boy here."

"Will if we take human clients," argued Dawn. "Humans have more money anyway."

"Point."

"Yes, well. If any of my friends need a good demon exterminator, I will let them know that you're in search of gainful employment." Giles couldn't help smiling at how well they'd taken his offer. He still wasn't entirely sure that it was ethical to work with a vampire, but there was no question that Spike could be a tremendous asset if he so chose.

"Speaking of gainful employment, I totally just won, so I will see you monsters later," said Dawn, discarding her final card. Spike let the rest of his fall in resignation, and Giles was amazed at how  _ civil  _ they were with each other. Surprising enough that Spike wasn't insulting her every chance he got, but the girl also seemed to be genuinely friendly with him. He watched as she scampered out into the sunlight, proving once and for all that she was  _ not _ a vampire, and that a perfectly human girl had somehow decided it was a good idea to take up residence with one of the most notorious vampires in history.

"So, ah, did you figure out what exactly Dawn is?"

"She's an artificial human," said Spike, lighting a cigarette. "From the future."

"Ah. Of course," said Giles, unable to think of any other response. "Perhaps she'll grace me with the tale sometime."

"She'll probably expect you to pay her. Greedy chit, she is. You know she read your diary?"

"She- Those entries are only for the eyes of select members of the council!"

Spike smirked. "Yeah, well. Sounds like she doesn't play by your rules."

Giles's anger fled when he remembered that  _ he  _ didn't always abide by the rules. His current conversation was a result of that, as was any and all information he gleaned from it. If Dawn actually turned out to be from the future, as absurd as that sounded, it might well be a good thing that she had as much information as possible. He just hoped he wasn't a fool for believing her when she claimed she wasn't evil.


	4. Chapter 4

"Giles, Spike didn't come home last night and we need to- oh."

Dawn bounded a good fifteen feet into the house before she realized that Spike, Xander, Willow, Anya, and Giles were all inside. Spike was sprawled out on his stomach, with the scoobies gathered around him like back-alley doctors. Giles prodded at the wound on his back while Xander held a flashlight, and Willow fussed over spellbooks. Spike wasn't actually unconscious, but he looked pretty darn close.

"What did you  _ do  _ to him?" Sure, OK, Spike was evil and probably deserved whatever it was, but he was all she had at the moment. Besides, the scoobies weren't supposed to be cruel, even if the object of cruelty did have a history of murder and brutality that would make Jack the Ripper jealous.

"He's only drunk," said Giles. "He'll be on his feet soon after we get this, ah, blinking thing out."

"Tracer," supplied Xander. 

Dawn nodded weakly. She'd seen Spike drink himself into a stupor before, but generally not while people were digging things out of his back. "You're sure he's OK?"

"He's as OK as he can be with a gash in his back the size of Texas," said Willow. Her eyes widened when she saw Dawn's expression. "Oh! No, it's really not that bad, I'm exaggerating. Giles is being super careful. Well, medium-careful. Um, who are you? I think I mighta missed the introductions there."

"I'm Dawn," said Dawn, letting herself sink down onto the couch cushions. She was vaguely aware that a more complete explanation was called for, but she didn't have the energy.  _ Later. I will tell them later, after all this random panic goes away. _

"Dawn is an associate of Spike's," said Giles. "Apparently, she and Spike have decided to take up some form of anti-demon mercenary work for the foreseeable future. That is, in large part, why we're helping him now."

_ Thank you Lucky Charms for Rupert Giles. _

"Wait, wait. Spike's a good guy now?" asked Xander.

"No," said Giles and Dawn, simultaneously. Dawn felt the need to clarify  _ that _ , if nothing else. "He needs money and likes violence. We're aiming a loose canon in roughly the right direction, but he's not a good guy yet, and he'd  _ probably _ jump at the chance to kill all of you if he could."

Nobody caught the "yet", and the others returned to digging the tracer out of Spike's back. Tension was high until Xander flushed it, and it was only once everyone relaxed a little that anyone thought to further question Dawn's presence. Dawn herself wasn't going to relax until Spike was sufficiently healed, which she figured would require feeding him. Giles didn't object when she went through his fridge to confirm that they had leftover blood. She hadn't expected him to be the second member of the "Spike might possibly be sort of OK" club, especially given that he'd tried to kill Spike even  _ with  _ a soul just a few weeks before her time travel spell. But like present-day Giles, Dawn wasn't eager to examine such alliances too closely. Help was help.

"Are you another recently-human demon? Is that why you're working with Spike?" asked Anya. 

Dawn was thankful that her face was still buried in the fridge. It gave her a second to wipe the near-panic off her face. She decided against actually answering the question, emptying a bag of blood into the nearest probably-clean mug. "I've never been evil. Well, sometimes I shoplift stuff, but I was never  _ evil _ ."

"So, what exactly are you?" asked Xander.

"I'm a girl," said Dawn pointedly, as though no other explanation was required. "I'll talk to Giles about it once I know Spike's gonna be OK. If that's OK?"

"Certainly," said Giles. "Spike did say a few things after you left the other day, and I would appreciate some manner of elaboration on certain aspects of your, ah, situation." 

_ Thank you Lucky Charms that Giles knows the word "subtlety". _

"Yeah, no problem. There's a bunch of stuff I actually really need to tell you, in that department. It's, uh, sensitive information, though, so if we could-"

"Would it help if we left the room?" asked Willow.

"Nah," said Dawn. "Like I said, later. How do I work this microwave?" 

By the time Dawn had figured out the microwave and persuaded drunk-but-at-least-somewhat-aware Spike to drink the blood, the other members of the scooby gang were mostly concerned with discussing the Initiative and its possible evilness. 

"You're gonna be OK?" 

Dawn knew the answer, of course, but she needed the reassurance. She'd already lost mom and Tara, and spent a whole summer thinking she'd lost Buffy. Given that the people who were  _ supposed  _ to be taking care of her were no longer doing so, she decided she really, really wasn't ready to lose Spike.

"Will be," said Spike, "soon's the room stops spinning. When did you get here?"

"About half an hour ago. Got worried when you didn't come home last night."

"Yeah?" His eyebrows shot up in a way they never would have if he were completely present. Now his surprise was unfiltered- he genuinely couldn't believe that anyone had gone looking for him. She'd felt that way herself, in the not-so-distant past. When she  _ had  _ gone missing, half the time, it was Spike who ended up finding her.

She was personally offended that he didn't realize she owed him- for that and for a dozen other things- so she rolled her eyes and gave him her best are-you-completely-stupid look. The one she'd learned from him. "Well,  _ duh _ ." 

As soon as he was mostly-sober (which didn't take that long, all things considered; Dawn wondered how much of it was vampire metabolism, and how much was that Spike was a licensed professional at getting totally wasted), Spike got dressed and began insisting that he wasn't going to leave town until the Initiative changed him back into a remorseless killer. Dawn found it easy to bite back her smile when she reminded herself that he was serious.

Giles took the opportunity to solidify his position as vice president of the Spike-might-possibly-be-sort-of-OK club. "Spike- lord knows why I'm telling you this, but it's for your own good. As long as the Initiative is in operation, it's not safe for you here."

Dawn didn't realize that Buffy was in the room until she spoke. "No. It's not safe for any of us."

With the dramatic opening out of the way, Buffy went on to explain that Professor Walsh had set her up to be monster chow. Dawn knew the basics, though neither she nor Giles believed the particulars of the plan worth recording. Instead, Dawn thought about how the group split itself up. Buffy was in the center, both because she was the slayer and the person who currently had the floor. Giles, Xander, and Willow surrounded her. Anya was in a similar place, since she was glued to Xander. Dating one of the core scoobies, Dawn noted, was the main method of joining the group, and probably the only way to do so successfully (not counting being magicked in by Czech monks). Interestingly, that rule applied  _ only  _ to Xander, Willow, and Giles's love interests. Whether due to some unwritten rule that the slayer ought not have boyfriends, or due to the fact that her boyfriends just  _ happened  _ to never see eye to eye with the rest of the scoobies, they never really integrated the same way.

Case and point, Spike was on the stairs, at the edge of the group and not really participating in discussion.  _ Wait, no, not case  _ or _ point. Spike and my sister are not together. They weren't together in any sense until after she died, and with any luck, they won't be together at all this time. I mean, unless they can do it without it being awful, or if Spike gets a soul  _ first _ , or something, because that might be OK. Otherwise, badness. _

Since Dawn was sitting next to Spike at the foot of the stairs, his comment jarred her out of her thoughts. "Gotta hand it to you, Goldilocks. You do have bleeding tragic taste in men. I got a cousin married to a regurgitating Frovalox demon who's got better instincts than you." 

Dawn held her breath and tried not to giggle. It  _ wasn't _ funny. Buffy  _ did  _ have terrible luck with this stuff, and the fact that Spike was inadvertently insulting himself didn't make him any less right.

"What does my taste in men have to do with this?" 

"You think Riley was off knitting booties for your future offspring while Maggie was stringing you up?" 

Dawn supposed that there probably wasn't a polite way to say, 'by the way, your boyfriend was probably in on the plan to get you exterminated', but it was hard to watch Buffy's face crumple. No  _ wonder  _ she and Spike were always trading jabs before- it was like you needed an emotional suit of armor to even talk to Spike-from-2000. 

"You guys think Riley had something to do with this?"

_ Poor Buffy _ .  _ I mean, it's not like I know anyone whose romantic relationships have actually turned out  _ well,  _ but it'd be nice if Buffy could find someone who wasn't literally planning on killing her. I mean, there was Angel, with the going evil and trying to destroy the world. And then Riley, with the actually being part of a secret organization that tried to kill her- and I  _ **_so_ ** _ wish I could remember how loyal he was to the Initiative at this point. And Spike... well, Buffy  _ **_met_ ** _ Spike because they were trying to kill each other, so it shouldn't have been a surprise when he, y'know, did things that merited perfectly serious threats of flamey death. _

_ Except it was a surprise. We're dumb that way, I guess. Maybe she's even dumber for still liking him- and everyone  _ knows  _ they still like each other. I mean, Andrew'd say they're freaking Romeo and Juliet, although he'd probably reference some really obscure show about aliens instead of Shakespeare. Xander'd insist that she never would have looked at him if not for the whole torn-out-of-heaven-and-clawed-her-way-out-of-her-own-coffin thing, so she's gotta be totally over him now and probably doesn't even really care about him outside her general goody-good desire to be helpful. But then Giles said that her reliance on Spike was coloring her judgement, so obviously me and Andrew aren't the only ones who're thinking it. _

_ And I don't even know what exactly I'm thinking. He loves her- that's not even a question. It's been obvious since forever, and even if it weren't, the soul would have been a giveaway. I've got no idea where Buffy's at, and I'm not sure she has any idea, either, but she's definitely more with the Spike-liking than she wants everyone to think. _

_Granted, there's still the fact that he tried to rape her last year. You'd think Buffy would hate him, but she actually totally doesn't, and maybe it's stupid, but I get it. Then again, we've established that the Summers clan is stupid in the trusting vampires department._ _Case and point, one Dawn Summers, who knows how miserable Spike can make everyone in this room, and who has nevertheless chosen to live with him in the very recent past._

By this point in Dawn's inner monologue, the scoobies had progressed to passing out weapons and discussing where they were going to hide. They were obviously scared of the Initiative and its newly-discovered homicidal tendencies, although Dawn had to admit that she wasn't too terrified. The Initiative wasn't exactly on her list of the top ten scariest things in the universe. In fact, "Scoobies hating each other" was much higher up on said list, as was "otherwise cool soulless vampires trying to rape Buffy".

She glanced over at Spike, whose fear was concealed but definitely present, if you knew how to read him.  _ And I do know how to read Spike. When did that happen?  _ Well, duh- it was Spike. Spike, who had once ordered a sexbot version of her sister, and then endured brutal torture for her sake before she could get used to hating him. Spike, who never stopped blaming himself for getting thrown off that tower. Spike, who openly wept at Buffy's funeral, even though only a year before he had been the one plotting the slayer's demise. Spike, who taught her how to cheat at cards over the long summer while he watched over her in Buffy's stead. Spike, who told her stories about his days of unrepentant evil, but edited out the really awful parts so everything stayed PG-13. Spike, who had finally done something so personally harmful to her that she was  _ sure  _ she would never forgive him, only to come back with a soul in tow. Spike-from-2000 didn't have even one of those memories, and for the first time, it really hit her that she'd allied herself with someone whose only interest in Buffy was his desire to rip out her throat. 

Her thoughts snapped from  _ will the Buffy and Spike of 2003 ever make up and be a happy couple?  _ to  _ whoops, it's early 2000 and those versions of Buffy and Spike aren't here, so this pointless speculation about Buffy's love life and Spike's possible redemption is actually extra-pointless speculation about a couple of people who don't exist, will never exist, and whose closest existing approximations happen to be mortal enemies right now. Way to focus, Dawn. _

In fairness, it had been less than a week since the spell. While Dawn was adaptive, she couldn't let go of people that quickly. Of course, Joyce and Tara were alive right now, so she was easily able to say that things were better this way when she actually took the time to consider it. It was only Spike that she really felt sad about. He'd worked so hard to become part of the team, and now he was totally not.  _ Although they're weirdly cool about helping him. I mean, Giles and Xander were totally down with keeping him from getting caught by the Initiative, and I wasn't even here to ask. _

She hoped that meant he could be welded into the group anyway. It might even be significantly less painful, if she could keep him from doing whatever it was that had made them all hate him so much more than this the first time. If she could just think about what that might be- 

_ No. Slayer business now, figure out how to push Spike towards scooby-dom later. _

As if to join in on her inner criticism, the front door flew open and nearly hit her. Dawn flinched out of the way just fast enough to avoid being smushed, and Riley Finn barreled into the room. The please-God-let-Buffy-be-OK tension left his shoulders for a split second when he saw that his girlfriend was in one piece, only to be immediately replaced with about six other kinds of tension. Buffy looked about the same- relieved to see him, but also obviously nervous. Spike looked tense, too, but in an "oh shit, here's that guy who wants to lock me up and vivisect me, I'd better not show any weakness around him" sort of way. Dawn sighed-

"That's Hostile 17."

-and then stood up protectively, because darn it, Spike was an evil vampire, but she sure as heck had more claim to him than  _ Riley _ did. Spike needed all the help he could get, because his idea of throwing Riley off the scent was claiming to be a friend of Xander's in some kind of God-awful Texas accent. So awful, in fact, that he gave up after one sentence and decided that vivisection was preferable to making a fool of himself.

Luckily (and surprisingly, because hey, weren't they supposed to be enemies still?), Buffy decided that it was a good idea to get between Spike and Riley before things got ugly. "This is Spike. He's, uh. It's a really long story. But he's not bad anymore!"

"Hey!" protested Spike. Dawn kicked him immediately, as hard as she could- she was pretty sure she couldn't actually hurt him, but it did surprise him. Spike didn't seem to think it worth the effort to continue, but his silence was far from enough to placate Riley.

"We've been looking all over the place for him, but you've known where he's been all along?"

"It's not like that," said Buffy, even though it was pretty much exactly like that.

"Then what's it's like? What's he doing here?" asked Riley. 

Buffy visibly drew a blank. Dawn had some idea why she was sheltering Spike, even without knowledge of who he might become- sure, he was a serial killer who undoubtedly deserved to end up on the pointy end of a stake, and given that he was still offended by being called  _ not bad _ , he probably didn't have plans to be anything else. But he was helpless, and not killing, so staking him wasn't really going to protect the hapless citizens of Sunnydale. It wasn't like Buffy killed vamps for the fun of it (well, not  _ primarily _ ); she killed them because they were evil and dangerous. Spike might have the evil part in spades, but if he wasn't a threat to anybody, killing him didn't line up with Buffy's goals. It might not have been  _ wrong _ , per se, but it wouldn't have had anything to do with protecting people, and therefore wasn't in the spirit of her sacred duty.

But even if Buffy realized that on a conscious level (and that was a big "if"), she definitely hadn't figured out how to articulate it. She hesitated way, way too long, and Spike filled the silence. "Leaving your swabs to your dramatics. Thanks. I've got my stories on the telly for that. By the by, if you're trying to kill her-" He grinned and gave an enthusiastic two thumbs up, pulled his duster over his head, and ran outside. Dawn frowned and shut the door behind him, watching him through the window. She waited until he rounded the corner- _ OK, they can't follow him now-  _ before returning her attention to the conversation.

Giles had the floor. "I've heard rumors that the Initiative wasn't all that we've been told. That, uh, secretly they're working towards some darker purpose. Something that might harm us all."

"No!" insisted Riley. "That's not what happens there."

"Yes it is," said Dawn. Riley turned on her, and she winced. On the other hand, Giles looked intrigued, and hey. She owed him. The Spike-might-possibly-be-sort-of-OK club had to stick together. "They're not good guys. Really, that much ought to be obvious now that they've tried to kill Buffy."

"And who are you supposed to be?" asked Riley.

"That's Dawn," said Buffy. "Which is a much shorter story, though no less confusing."

_ You don't know the half of it.  _ "I don't remember everything, but project 314 is this thing called Adam. Some kind of really strong cyborg-demon-thing they're working on-"

"Woah, wait, the Initiative is making demons  _ stronger _ ?" asked Xander. 

"That's completely ridiculous!" said Riley.

"I thought so, too," said Dawn. "But my sources aren't wrong about this."

"Your  _ sources _ ," said Riley, in that tone that people use when something sounds so crazy that they don't want to dignify it with an argument, and instead rely on sarcastically repeating whatever the other person said, as though this adds anything at all to the discussion. This tactic was reason #547 why Dawn found it hard to take adults seriously these days. 

"Dawn," said Giles, in a completely different tone, "am I to understand that this information comes from a source that I would trust completely?"

Dawn narrowed her eyes. She hadn't thought to wonder what Spike had told Giles about her, but evidently it was something useful, if Giles was taking her word seriously now. "You would trust it."

"I see," said Giles, removing his glasses. "In that case, we really must discuss the specifics as soon as possible and treat this as a serious threat."

"There's no way," said Riley. "Even if there is some kind of threat here, it's not because of professor Walsh. Excuse me if I believe her over whatever this kid says." And then he was gone, banging the door behind him. Buffy called him back, but he didn't stop.

"Dawn, I want to be clear," said Giles. "You believe that the initiative will make another attempt on Buffy's life in the near future?"

Dawn was so thrown for a loop by him taking her seriously that she almost forgot to answer. "Uh, I'm not sure. There's a strong possibility."

And just like that, Buffy's mood flipped. One second, she was worried about Riley and the fate of her new relationship with him. Then suddenly she was a commanding officer, a prototype for the general-Buffy that Dawn had seen so much of in the last few weeks before the spell. "We have to hide. Someplace they won't be able to find us. My house is out, obviously. Riley just saw you two here, so Xander, Will, your places are out, too."

"Riley has no idea where Spike and I live," said Dawn, looking at her feet.

"That's- Hold on. You two  _ live  _ together?" 

"Yeah," said Dawn. "The crypt is mine, and I'm letting Spike live in it for security purposes. An actual house would be nice, but as far as vamp defenses go, the next best thing is a bigger, badder vampire. If anybody here has a problem with it, then it's a good thing it's totally not your business." 

Willow looked a little nauseous at that, and Anya seemed vaguely impressed. Buffy looked like she was biting back a retort _.  _ "You really think Spike would be OK if we showed up at the crypt?"

Dawn frowned and chewed her lower lip.  _ OK, mercenary _ . "No, but I think I can justify it if you guys pay for bodyguard services. It's not like he can hand you over to the Initiative, since he has to avoid them, too. Worst case scenario he'll just take his stuff and find a different crypt. What do you guys wanna pay, one hundred per person per day? Sounds reasonable to me."

"Fifty," said Anya. Dawn shot her a warning look.

Buffy was more concerned about other details. "Bodyguard services? Spike's a  _ bodyguard _ ?"

"Spike and Dawn are mercenaries, at least for the moment," said Giles, saving Dawn from having to justify herself. "It's hardly the worst arrangement he could have. They kill demons for money- not precisely legal, but it would make the town a safer place."

Dawn nodded, eager to give her sister a clearer picture. "He smashes stuff, and I figure out what to smash. But like I said, we're totally white hats. Gray hats. I guess he's more of a black hat in white plastic wrap. The point is, we kill bad guys, and we've got a big crypt that the Initiative doesn't know anything about. Giles, you remember where the crypt is?"

"Of course," said Giles. And they got down to business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...aaaand that's all I have of this one. A pity.


End file.
